Editor’s Note: Brave activist throughout the world risk their lives to protect the environment. We honor and respect their courage and realize that they are truly heroes. May they remain safe and in our thoughts to give them strength to carry on. Are you working with an organization that protects the environment?
Over nearly 30 years, Carlos Zorrilla and the organizations he co-founded helped stop six companies from developing open-pit copper mining operations in the Intag Valley in Ecuador. As a leader and public figure, Zorrilla is often for advice from communities facing similar struggles, so in 2009 he published a guide on how to protect one’s community from mining and other extractive operations. The 60-page guide shares wisdom and resources, including mines’ environmental and health risks, key early warning signs a company is moving in, and advice on mitigating damage if a mine does go ahead. The most important point, Zorrilla says in an interview with Mongabay, is to stop mining before it starts. Carlos Zorrilla is a leader in what locals say is the longest continuous resistance movement against mining in Latin America.
Zorrilla’s family fled from Cuba to the U.S. in 1962 when he was 11 years old. He moved to the Intag Valley in Ecuador in the 1970s, citing his love for the cloud forest ecosystem there. Soon after he arrived, so did the first of the mining companies.
Over the following decades, Zorrilla and the organizations he co-founded, including DECOIN (Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag), helped block five transnational mining companies and a national company from developing operations in one of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems.
In the process, Zorrilla and community members say they faced personal threats, smear campaigns, arrests and violence. But the movement also notched historic wins, including a constitutional case upholding the rights of nature against Chilean state-owned miner Codelco and the Ecuadorian national mining company in 2023.
Community members holding a sign that says, “let’s save Intag.” Communities in Intag Valley have been resisting mining for nearly 30 years. Photo by Carlos Zorrilla.
As a leader and public figure, Zorrilla is often sought out for advice by people facing similar threats. In response, he and two co-authors published Protecting Your Community From Mining and Other Extractive Operations: A Guide for Resistance in 2009 and an updated version in 2016. (The guide is also available in Spanish, French and Bahasa Indonesian).
“After getting rid of two mining companies, I was constantly being asked how the hell we did it,” Zorrilla tells Mongabay. “Rather than keep answering individuals, I wrote the manual. It’s much easier to just say, ‘Read the manual!’”
The 60-page guide shares experiences and resources, including the environmental and health risks of mines, strategies to prevent mining before it starts, key early warning signs a company is moving in, and advice on mitigating damage if a mine goes ahead.
Zorrilla says the most important point is to stop mining before it starts. To emphasize this point, he also published Elements for Protecting Your Community from Mining and Other Extractive Industries, which focuses on preventing mining from gaining a foothold.
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“Stop the companies before they corrupt your communities and before they discover economically viable mineral deposits,” he says. “Once they start investing in exploratory activities it becomes progressively harder to get rid of them.”
Mining is a divisive issue within Indigenous and local communities. Some see economic benefits to address poverty, own their own mining projects, and highlight the need to negotiate better benefit-sharing agreements or collaborations with mining projects as a form of self-determination.
“But these memorandums only work with ethical mining companies and they are as rare as chicken teeth,” Zorrilla says.
Zorrilla’s opinions on mining are contentious. After the publication of the resistance guide, Ecuador’s president at the time, Rafael Correa, denounced it on public television as “destabilizing” and a foreign-led interference, in a move that Zorrilla says was “great publicity for the manual.”
Former Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, holds up Zorrilla’s resistance guide on public television in 2009, denouncing it as “destabilizing”.
As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, the demand for critical minerals to feed “clean” energy technologies such as electric cars is rising. Thus, mining is also increasing.
However, many experts say mining in Ecuador, especially in the Intag Valley, is just a bad idea. Aside from the earthquakes, rainfall, steep slopes and lack of infrastructure, it’s a country with a wealth of other options for development, such as ecotourism potential or sustainable agriculture.
“It’s really a poor choice to develop large-scale mining in such a rich country,” says William Sacher, professor and researcher at Simón Bolívar Andean University in Quito, who studies large-scale mining and its impacts. “If you actually do the math just in terms of cost and benefit, if you take into account the costs of large-scale mining, they outweigh the benefits.”
Zorrilla’s work with DECOIN resisting mining as well as restoring forests and watersheds has been internationally recognized with awards, including the United Nations Development Programme’s Equator Prize in 2017. This year, Zorrilla won the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature’s award for defending nature’s rights.
It’s his connection to nature, he says, that keeps him motivated. “It is hard to put into words the connection I feel with the land and people, with the biological community I am part of,” he says. “What else could someone do that feels to be an integral part of a community? How could one not defend it against forces that would destroy it?”
In an interview with Mongabay’s Liz Kimbrough, Zorrilla discusses the guide and his experiences.
An open pit copper mine in DRC. Image by Fairphone (CC BY S.A. 2.0)
Mongabay: What inspired you to write this guide?
Carlos Zorrilla: I think two main reasons motivated me to write the guide. The first and most important was that we had gone through a lot in confronting a Japanese and a Canadian mining company in the 1990s and the early 2000s and had to do so without any idea of how to go about it. I kept wishing there was some concrete information on the best ways for communities to confront the presence of these companies. Much as I looked around, I was unable to find anything.
I thought other communities could benefit from our experience in successfully standing up to two transnational mining corporations and blocking mining development in our area (as of early 2024, civil society in Intag has been able to block five transnational mining companies and a national one from opening a mine).
The second reason is much more practical. After getting rid of two mining companies, I was constantly being asked how the hell we did it. Rather than keep answering individuals, I wrote the manual. It’s much easier to just say, “Read the manual!”
Mongabay: You mention that preventing a project in the exploration phase is much easier than stopping it once mining has started. What are some early warning signs that communities should look out for?
Carlos Zorrilla: First, it helps to clarify why it’s so much more difficult to stop a mine once it has opened. A large mining company can incur hundreds of millions of dollars in exploration costs — costs that, in most cases, the country issuing the licenses could be held liable for if the mining company is unable to develop the mining site. This is a result of a country signing bilateral investment treaties with other countries to protect the investments of private companies.
So, in essence, the more a company invests in a project, the more expensive it is for a signatory country to pay off the mining company to go home.
The other reason is that the longer a mining company is a territory, the more likely they are to learn how to co-opt people and institutions, and they waste no time doing so. It’s similar to contracting cancer or other similar diseases: you’ve got to treat its soon as possible, otherwise it becomes deadly or ravages your body so badly that it becomes unable to defend itself.
Another reason it is imperative to stop a company in its initial stage or before is that the longer a mining company explores, the greater the possibility of finding an economically viable ore deposit. If they are successful, companies are much more likely to convince governments to allow all permits and look the other way in cases of illegal activities. It is also much easier for the company to find investors if they can show they have a viable mine to develop.
Mongabay: What are the first signs a company is interested in exploring territory?
Carlos Zorrilla: You may find strange people wandering around the community asking questions. Another is if you suddenly find that private individuals start to buy large tracts of land. Your community could be subjected to social and economic surveys carried out by a government agency under the guise of social or economic development or identifying health needs.
Keep in mind that it’s essential for the companies to find out as much as they can about the communities and the inhabitants they will be dealing with. This also goes for local government needs. For example, they may identify basic needs, such as the lack of basic health services, road and school infrastructure that needs repairing, lack of safe drinking water, etc. Once these needs are mapped out, they will offer the community and/or subnational governments financial help to address them. They often even offer to create so-called development groups or organizations, such as farming co-ops or women’s groups, and provide initial funding to address some of the needs. Companies may sign financial agreements with local or state governments to help cover the costs of supplying communities with basic necessities.
Needless to say, the funding always has strings attached to it, the least of which is that the subnational governments and community groups support the mining company’s presence and, later, the development of the mine.
The most important thing to remember is that the main objective of the companies is to create complete dependency on what they provide, whether it is jobs, road maintenance, drinking water, or basic health services. The inhabitants become so accustomed to having the services provided by the companies that they forget that they have lived without these things all their lives or that it is the state or national government’s responsibility to provide them. The dependency can become so instituted that the locals stop petitioning the local or national governments to provide the services and rely solely on the companies. This can also apply to subnational governments, especially when the national governments purposely reduce their funding as a strategy for the mining projects to gain support from the local populace.
At the same time, the companies are gathering basic information about the community, they are also identifying key players within the community. These are persons who have influence or could be groomed to hold a position of authority. They are the first ones co-opted. It could be someone successful in business or a well-respected community leader. They, in turn, will do a lot of the work for the company, such as convincing their neighbors that mining is the best way for the community and families to get out of poverty. Or it’s really silly not to accept the company’s support to build that road everyone always wanted. That propaganda is infinitely more effective when espoused by individuals you know and respect.
Community members in Intag protest mining in the forest. Image courtesy of Carlos Zorrilla.
Mongabay: What do you believe are some of the best ways to stop a mine before it starts?
Carlos Zorrilla: The best way to know what you’re up against is to find out all that you can about the company: things like who the owners are, the company’s history, main sources of funding, and where the company’s stocks are traded (if it is a publicly traded company).
Once you know all that you can about the company, your main objective is to stop it before it starts gathering information, hiring community members, or buying land — certainly before it holds meetings in your community.
As soon as you suspect a company is interested in your territory, hold public meetings or assemblies where, hopefully, most of the community’s adult population can participate in deciding whether to meet with the company. It can help to invite knowledgeable people to discuss some of the problems the community will have to face if they open the door to mining.
It is absolutely essential that no one accepts meetings with company officials or government employees promoting mining development unless it’s in a public setting with everyone from the community invited.
It is strongly recommended that the bylaws of the community include provisions for any approval of activities affecting the natural environment or social peace of the community be approved by two-thirds majority of the community members. It is dangerous to let the board members of the community (president, vice president, secretary, etc.) represent the community when it comes to allowing activities that could have such terrible and long-lasting social and environmental impacts.
Mongabay: The guide says mining companies use many tactics to divide communities and quell opposition. What’s the most difficult company tactic to counter that you’ve encountered? What should communities be aware of?
Carlos Zorrilla: The companies can use multiple tactics to neutralize the opposition. We’ve experienced just about all. Anywhere from making up criminal lawsuits to try to imprison effective opposition leaders and hiring paramilitaries to violently access the mining site, to death threats, outright buying community leaders, to terrible smear campaigns aimed at discrediting resistance leaders and/or the organizations that support the communities.
Then there are soft tactics. One of the hardest to counter is the easy money that the companies offer to the leaders and, eventually, community members when they start working for the company. This is especially effective in areas where making a living off the land is difficult.
Needless to say, this will lure people away from the fields and the normally hard work that is agriculture. Remember, the company offers steady paychecks, often accompanied by social security and health coverage. One of the things we must do is point out that these jobs will not last more than a few years or until the mine opens. Only qualified personnel are required once a mine opens, with few exceptions. But the company will never admit to it.
Communities have to know what the sacrifices are of accepting the jobs the companies offer. These include very often permanent, ongoing social conflicts; it could also lead to the relocation of whole communities to make room for the mine and its infrastructure, possibly contamination of water sources, desecrating sacred lands, and direct impacts on sustainable activities like ecotourism or agroecological farming.
It’s also been documented that there is more delinquency and violence surrounding mining projects, among many other negative impacts. The impacts are especially hard on women. Most mining jobs go to men, worsening economic inequality within households. Women often have to replace men’s work in the fields, adding even more stress to their daily lives. There also tends to be more health problems from STDs, plus more interfamily violence in mining sites.
So, when mining companies come offering jobs, communities have to consider all the impacts, not just look at the positive aspects.
That is why it is so important not to let the company get this far. Communities have to know that mining companies and government officials lie when it comes to convincing communities about mining. That is one of the most important messages. They have to lie because if they were to tell the truth about the social and environmental impacts of mining, not a single person in the community would support them.
In this light, it’s important to invite knowledgeable persons and community members from other communities that have suffered at the hands of mining companies to share with the communities what really goes on when mining companies roll into your community.
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.
The film Ecosophia is a tour through many of the issues facing humanity: our addiction to growth, energy, and materials, and our devastating use of “surplus energy” to extract and consume—and thus destroy—the very system that sustains us. The narrative of the film is told through a series of short interviews, interspersed with reflections by the filmmaker, Peter Charles Downey.
Each interviewee brings a slightly different perspective on the predicament we are in: a completely unsustainable industrial civilization that is causing ongoing collapse of the living Earth; a global civilization that will soon collapse under its own weight.
The film begins by describing the fundamental problem: infinite growth on a finite planet. Tim Garrett describes what exponential growth means—the doubling over the next 30 years of the total energy and raw materials used by humanity in the past 10,000 years. Sid Smith explains that, no, renewables will not save us. Ian Lowe reminds us that we are right on track to match the predictions of the Limits To Growth—that is, collapse somewhere between 2030-2050 of civilization as we know it now. Climate change is highlighted but correctly understood and described as just one symptom of the overarching problem we’ve created for ourselves.
A little history: as soon as we learned how to store surplus, we were in trouble. This “storing of surplus” is often associated with the beginning of agriculture, but as John Gowdy describes, it actually happened before agriculture. Just one example: Pacific Northwest Native Americans learned how to smoke salmon and store it over the winter. This led to hierarchy and inequality, the inevitable outcomes of stored surplus, as the tribe who could best store salmon would gain priority over the best salmon runs, just like kings and emperors created hierarchy and inequality by storing surplus grain, thus creating slavery and the need for soldiers to protect the grain. The ability to store surplus is what allowed us to grow far beyond the carrying capacity of Earth to sustain us.
We are torn between Stone Age instincts and space age technology and we don’t know how to cope. As Bill Rees describes, we now have the capacity via fossil fuels and technology to grow exponentially, breaking the bounds of the constraints most species face—disease, resource shortages, etc.— which kept our population in control until about 10,000 years ago.
We learn about one third of the way into the film that Ecosophia means the passing on of knowledge over many generations about the specifics of place; of how to live well in a place, deeply understanding the climate, soil, and natural communities of that place. This localized knowledge is what allowed us to live sustainably on the land as a species for thousands of years before we went astray.
From here, the film moves from describing the problem into describing how we got here: a fundamental disconnection with ourselves, with the natural world, with that localized knowledge and respect for place. The interviews cover this disconnection well; Stuart Hill, a permaculturist, describes how our theistic religions come with spiritual beliefs that are limitless, but that nature has limits, and this spiritual disconnection from the reality of the natural world is a crisis for us as a species because we are utterly dependent on that natural world.
My favorite part of the film is perhaps the interview with Stephen Jenkinson, who is known for his work on Orphan Wisdom. “Exercising dominion is a surrogate for belonging,” he says, which is such a wonderfully concise and precise way to describe what we are doing to the Earth. We are orphans from the natural world, he says, not in the sense that our parents are dead, but rather that we cannot get to our parents (the natural world), and so, we don’t know how to belong. He says, “This is not a recipe for shame or class action guilt, despite the regime for social justice.” I strongly resonated with this, because of the extreme shame and guilt that are so pervasive in the critical social justice movement that is currently sweeping the Western world, and which seems so wrong-headed.
We orphans—and all of us who watch the film and read this review are orphans—will have to do the work to reconnect because we no longer inherit belonging through our ancestors, the ones who knew how to live well in a place. We are orphans because we can no longer access that generational knowledge in a modern culture that has all but destroyed it; we must do the work to recreate it ourselves. That is a multi-generational task. Are we up to it? As Stephen asks in the film, “How bad does it have to get before we question the utility of persisting?”
It’s clear in the film that the filmmaker recognizes the narcissism of focusing on self-improvement over taking responsibility for what we have done, what we are doing. Interviewee Alnoor Ladha describes this as “retreat consciousness.” He identifies that our loss of belonging makes us feel victimized, because we are “brought into a world that doesn’t belong to us” and our coping mechanism is to try to get as much as we can “on the sinking ship, to have a first-class cabin on the Titanic.”
Yet the message we are left with at the end of the film is profoundly disempowering. The last interviewee, John Seed, who is in the deep ecology movement, concludes that if we—humanity—are destroying the Earth, then we are the Earth destroying herself, because there is no separation between us and the Earth.
On the one hand, yes, that is true. We humans are nature. And on the other hand, to describe the cruelty and psychopathy of what humans are doing to the Earth as “the Earth destroying herself” is to utterly misunderstand the Earth and at once assign too much, and too little agency to the natural world.
The film has laid out the problem of the physical and spiritual crises we face, encouraged us to do the first steps—the work on ourselves to understand the problem and cultivate the desire to do something about it, and to relearn and recreate the wisdom for how to live well in a place—and then completely diffuses any energy and passion this might have inspired in the viewer by giving us an out.
At the very end of the film, the filmmaker moves into full-on human supremacy mode, saying that we humans are perhaps “special” and “unique,” because we haven’t found evidence of “any other intelligent life-form in the universe.” He says that what makes us special is that we evolved a passion to learn about ourselves, and that if we are indeed unique in the universe, that we might want to “keep this going.”
What’s shocking about this conclusion—that we are unique and rare and special, that we are the only “intelligent life-form in the universe”—is that it is so obviously untrue. Throughout the film, I enjoyed the many wonderful clips of animals and natural communities. Why is the filmmaker not able to see that this is the intelligence he thinks is missing out there in the Universe? It’s right here with us.
The Earth may indeed be unique in all of the universe in her capacity to support life, but we humans are not alone: we are surrounded by intelligence and love in the ecosystems and many species with whom we share this amazing planet. To listen to all of these interviews, to be able to appreciate the many life-forms on Earth, and yet conclude that humanity’s utter destruction of what might be the only planet capable of sustaining life in the entire universe is “the Earth destroying herself” and that this is part of nature is disappointing, to say the least.
In conclusion, I recommend the film, but caution viewers: there is another, better ending to envision. Yes, we must understand the problem. Yes, we must do the work on ourselves. Yes, we must listen to people who still understand ecosophia: that living well in a place with humility and respect for the natural world is the only way for us to live sustainably on the Earth.
And then we can take action. We can fight back against the forces that push us further into disconnection from reality each and every day. This is what the Earth herself wants us to do, if we’d only listen. Fight back!
Thank you to Peter Charles Downey for access to the preview of the film Ecosophia.
Editor’s note: Wind farms are not a solution to ecological destruction, especially not when built in protected reserves. Singapore-based company Rizal Wind Energy Corp. (RWEC) is drilling illegally in wildlife sanctuary and ecotourism area Masungi Georeserve.
For this massive construction it is bulldozing forest to make roads. It needs diesel for the trucks and lube oil to run the wind turbines. Local environmentalists have protected the Masungi Georeserve over generations through educating local people and engaging in struggles against land grabbing.
This important work is dangerous: park rangers are shot, the army arrests workers and the government sends their agencies with legal threats.
Despite having considered giving up, conservationists won’t surrender: “If we abandon it, who will look after the wildlife?”
Everyone who is able to get active in these times of ecocide should ask themselves this same question.
Surprise Discovery of Wind Farm Project in Philippine Reserve Prompts Alarm
In late 2023, conservationists monitoring the Philippine’s Masungi Georeserve were surprised to encounter four drilling rigs operating within the ostensibly protected wildlife sanctuary. The construction equipment belongs to a company building a wind farm within the reserve, which claims to have received the necessary permits despite the area’s protected status. Masungi Georeserve Foundation, Inc. (MGFI), the nonprofit organization managing the site, has launched a petition calling for the project to be canceled, saying that renewable energy generation should not be pursued at the expense of the environment.
Drilling for windfarms without permission
Conservationists have expressed alarm over the surprise discovery that a Singapore-based company has started construction of a wind farm inside the Philippines’ Masungi Georeserve.
The Masungi Karst Conservation Area (MKCA), declared a strict nature reserve and wildlife sanctuary since 1993, is home to more than 400 wildlife species. The site is located in Rizal, a province about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the Philippine capital, Manila.
Drone images from late 2023 captured by the Masungi Georeserve Foundation, Inc. (MGFI), the nonprofit organization that manages the site, showed that Rizal Wind Energy Corp. (RWEC) was behind the construction, drilling to build 12 wind turbines as part of a renewable energy project. RWEC is owned by Singapore-based energy developer Vena Energy.
“This development entails widespread road construction and raises significant concerns for local wildlife, particularly threatening birds and bat populations,” the foundation said in a statement on Feb. 12. The group estimates that 500-1,000 hectares (about 1,200-2,500 acres) of the MKCA could be affected by the project, as it would require extensive road networks that may lead to forest clearing, vegetation damage, and visual disruption of the natural landscape.
The MKCA, previously commercially logged and barren, has been undergoing forest restoration since 1996 through a joint-venture agreement between the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Blue Star Construction and Development Corp., owned by the founder of Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. In 2016, when the foundation was formally established, Masungi also opened to the public as an ecotourism site, generating revenue to support ongoing restoration efforts in the area.
Green greed disturbs protected zone
Of the more than 400 flora and fauna species that call Masungi home, around 70 are endemic to the Philippines, including the Luzon tarictic hornbill (Penelopides manillae), which is nationally listed as vulnerable, and the Luzon mottle-winged flying fox (Desmalopex leucoptera), one of the world’s largest bats and internationally categorized as vulnerable.
In an online signature campaign against the construction of the wind farm, the group said this “misguided energy development” is the latest threat to Masungi, which already faces illegal logging, land grabbing, quarrying, and violence against its forest rangers. These challenges exist even though Masungi is part of the 26,000-hectare (64,500-acre) Upper Marikina River Basin that was declared a protected landscape in 2011.
The Masungi management said this venture “marked a disturbing violation” of a 1993 administrative order by the DENR prohibiting industrial or commercial uses of Masungi. The organization added that the wind farm project also shows a “blatant disregard” for the area’s designation as a strict protection zone in its own management plan.
As per the Philippine environmental impact statement system, projects that plan to operate in ecologically sensitive zones like Masungi need to obtain an environmental compliance certificate from the DENR prior to commencing activities.
Wind farm in the Philippines
Over four years of developing the Rizal wind farm, Vena Energy said that, “being mindful of its environmental impact,” it has secured various Philippine government permits, including an environmental compliance certificate, protected area management board clearances, and a certificate precondition, following an environmental impact assessment study and consultations with Indigenous peoples.
“Vena Energy assures the public that it continues to maintain open dialogue with stakeholders and is always willing to work with concerned parties to achieve the common good,” Angela Tan, the company’s corporate communications chief, told Mongabay in an emailed statement. The company has not responded to a request to verify its permits.
Coincidental discovery
MGFI says it was never formally informed of the project, which is reportedly nearing commercialization. Instead, georeserve staff discovered the project during routine monitoring of the site. MGFI advocacy officer Billie Dumaliang and her team periodically fly a drone over the reserve to monitor land changes, whether these are caused by fires, clearings, or new structures. In late 2023, they said, they were shocked to see four drilling rigs.
Zooming in on the photos, they discovered that RWEC was behind the drilling. “We immediately searched for their contact so that we can reach out to them and find out more about the project before reacting,” Dumaliang told Mongabay in an email on Feb. 21. “Nonetheless, we were surprised because as designated caretakers of the area, we were not informed of any wind development underway within the Masungi Karst Conservation Area.”
Hoping to persuade the company to relocate, MGFI did not publicize the issue until Feb. 12. This was after two meetings with company representatives where MGFI told them “they are on the wrong track.” According to MGFI, though, the company remains determined to build the wind farm inside Masungi, claiming it will undertake “‘mitigation measures.”
“However, mitigation is superficial if the site selection is wrong in the first place,” Dumaliang said, further expressing disappointment over what she describes as the company’s failure to adhere to emerging environmental, social and governance principles in the alternative energy industry.
“There are many other places to build colossal wind turbines — why do it inside a sensitive karst ecosystem and wildlife sanctuary which cannot be replaced?”
Touching interviews about the activists protecting Masungi Georeserve.
Wind power push
The Philippine government has promoted wind energy development to help meet its target of increasing the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix from 32.7% in 2022 to 50% by 2040. As of 2022, the country’s wind installed generating capacity stood at 427 megawatts, projected to rise to 442 MW by 2025. Since the enactment of a renewable energy law in 2008 up until November 2023, contracts have been awarded to 239 wind power projects. This includes RWEC’s 603 MW (potential capacity) project spanning Rizal and Quezon provinces, listed by the country’s energy department as in the predevelopment stage.
MGFI said wind energy development shouldn’t be pursued at the expense of the environment. “The transition to renewable energy and nature-based solutions such as reforestation and biodiversity conservation should go together. There should be no conflict between the two if the transition to renewable energy is done in a responsible manner,” Dumaliang said.
“If renewable energy development falls under the usual trappings of greed and capitalism, then we risk doing more damage than good.”
The group, along with 30 other civil society organizations, has demanded the revocation of RWEC and Vena Energy’s permits in the MKCA “on scientific grounds and the lack of public consultation.” It’s also seeking outright rejections for similar applications in this wildlife sanctuary, which is meant to be off-limits to industrial and commercial activities.
Editor’s note: As humanity, we’ve come so far as to consider – after having wreaked havoc on a perfectly functioning ecosystems on a flourishing planet – that producing clouds from seawater is a good idea. It sounds too bizarre to be true and even hilarious – but it’s deeply sad.
There are indeed scientists who get paid for researching not in a laboratory but in real life situations, how millions of aircrafts and ships can bring tons of aerosols into the sky to prevent the sun from doing what she does: shining to provide sunlight.
It seems as if some start-up youngsters with a hangover after pulling an all-nighter came up with that idea. But no, the proponents are adult scholars and they mean it.
With this sci-fi scenario we witness a degenerate humanity completely in denial over what is actually happening. A cut from the living and breathing world around us, inducing the immersion into minds of madness, who try to techno-fix us into oblivion.
It’s like hiring a beautician to put makeup on a person that is bleeding out, while the doctor stands there doing nothing.
It’s like calling a friend when you’re in an emergency situation instead of calling the ambulance.
It’s like breathing in while being under water.
Can we please stop rivaling the sun? Thanks.
Not a Bright Idea: Cooling the Earth by Reflecting Sunlight Back to Space
The United Nations Environment Assembly this week considered a resolution on solar radiation modification, which refers to controversial technologies intended to mask the heating effect of greenhouse gases by reflecting some sunlight back to space.
Proponents argue the technologies will limit the effects of climate change. In reality, this type of “geoengineering” risks further destabilising an already deeply disturbed climate system. What’s more, its full impacts cannot be known until after deployment.
The draft resolution initially called for the convening of an expert group to examine the benefits and risks of solar radiation modification. The motion was withdrawn on Thursday after no consensus could be reached on the controversial topic.
A notable development was a call from some Global South countries for “non-use” of solar radiation modification. We strongly support this position. Human-caused climate change is already one planetary-scale experiment too many – we don’t need another.
A risky business
In some circles, solar geoengineering is gaining prominence as a response to the climate crisis. However, research has consistently identified potential risks posed by the technologies such as:
the infringement of human rights across generations – including, but not limited to, passing on huge risks to generations that will come after us.
Here, we discuss several examples of solar radiation modification which exemplify the threats posed by these technologies. These are also depicted in the graphic below.
A load of hot air
In April 2022, an American startup company released two weather balloons into the air from Mexico. The experiment was conducted without approval from Mexican authorities.
The intent was to cool the atmosphere by deflecting sunlight. The resulting reduction in warming would be sold for profit as “cooling credits” to those wanting to offset greenhouse gas pollution.
Once started, this stratospheric aerosol injection would need to be carried out continually for at least a century to achieve the desired cooling effect. Stopping prematurely would lead to an unprecedented rise in global temperatures far outpacing extreme climate change scenarios.
Heads in the clouds
Another solar geoengineering technology, known as marine cloud brightening, seeks to make low-lying clouds more reflective by spraying microscopic seawater droplets into the air. Since 2017, trials have been underway on the Great Barrier Reef.
The project is tiny in scale, and involves pumping seawater onto a boat and spraying it from nozzles towards the sky. The project leader says the mist-generating machine would need to be scaled up by a factor of ten, to about 3,000 nozzles, to brighten nearby clouds by 30%.
After years of trials, the project has not yet produced peer-reviewed empirical evidence that cloud brightening could reduce sea surface temperatures or protect corals from bleaching.
The Great Barrier Reef is the size of Italy. Scaling up attempts at cloud brightening would require up to 1,000 machines on boats, all pumping and spraying vast amounts of seawater for months during summer. Even if it worked, the operation is hardly, as its proponents claim, “environmentally benign”.
The technology’s effects remain unclear. For the Great Barrier Reef, less sunlight and lower temperatures could alter water movement and mixing, harming marine life. Marine life may also be killed by pumps or negatively affected by the additional noise pollution. And on land, marine cloud brightening may lead to altered rainfall patterns and increased salinity, damaging agriculture.
More broadly, 101 governments last year agreed to a statement describing marine-based geoengineering, including cloud brightening, as having “the potential for deleterious effects that are widespread, long-lasting or severe”.
Balls, bubbles and foams
The Arctic Ice Project involves spreading a layer of tiny glass spheres over large regions of sea ice to brighten its surface and halt ice loss.
Another proposed intervention is spraying the ocean with microbubbles or sea foam to make the surface more reflective. This would introduce large concentrations of chemicals to stabilise bubbles or foam at the sea surface, posing significant risk to marine life, ecosystem function and fisheries.
No more distractions
Some scientists investigating solar geoengineering discuss the need for “exit ramps” – the termination of research once a proposed intervention is deemed to be technically infeasible, too risky or socially unacceptable. We believe this point has already been reached.
Since 2022, more than 500 scientists from 61 countries have signed an open letter calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering. Aside from the types of risks discussed above, the letter said the speculative technologies detract from the urgent need to cut global emissions, and that no global governance system exists to fairly and effectively regulate their deployment.
Calls for outdoor experimentation of the technologies are misguided and detract energy and resources from what we need to do today: phase out fossil fuels and accelerate a just transition worldwide.
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity, and global responses have been woefully inadequate. Humanity must not pursue dangerous distractions that do nothing to tackle the root causes of climate change, come with incalculable risk, and will likely further delay climate action.
James Kerry is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University, Australia and Senior Marine and Climate Scientist, OceanCare, Switzerland, James Cook University.
Aarti Gupta is a Professor of Global Environmental Governance, Wageningen University.
Terry Hughes is a Distinguished Professor, James Cook University.
It’s a chilly spring night in early March in Gruenheide, which is around 40 km (25 miles) away from Berlin. A few determined people walk across a flat meadow surrounded by pine forests at a wintry zero degrees. They stop at a high-voltage pylon, ignite the cables, then trigger a short circuit with water. Flames shoot up with the help of car tires, the high-voltage pylon spits fire into the darkness of the night.
It may have happened roughly like this when the environmental activists from the Vulkangruppe Tesla Abschalten! (Volcano Group Switch-off Tesla!) successfully committed an act of sabotage on March 7 against the Gigafactory Tesla, Europe’s only E-car factory.
Huge Financial Losses
The power at the nearby plant goes out immediately and it’s assembly line producing 500,000 vehicles a year, comes to a standstill.
The Volcano Group, which published a letter of confession rated as genuine, calls it a “total failure of a seemingly unassailable giant”.
A few days later employees gather in solidarity in front of the Tesla plant to show that they stand by their employer, as if he needed that empathy. Elon Musk though knows how to twist the opinions in his favor, stating that “the dumbest eco-terrorists in the world […] are puppets of those who have no good environmental goals,” in other words: he’s the one with excellent environmental goals and clearly not a puppet but a master.
Today, on March 12, the Gigafactory is running again in slow capacity, but these five days of production stoppage have caused a loss in the “high nine-digit range”, although according to a podcast by the FAZ newspaper this refers to profit rather than turnover. Car bodies had to be scrapped and robots repurposed. Tesla shares slumped by 3%.
Not bad for one burning high-voltage pole.
Citizens Against Clearcutting
There were 5,000 households and small businesses cut off from the power supply for several hours. The environmental activists apologize for this and said that there would have been no other way to shut down Tesla without risking a power outage in other areas. However, they would have ensured that no human lives were put at risk.
The activist group is not alone in its criticism of the Gigafactory: the Gruenheide Citizens’ Initiative and Tesla den Hahn Abdrehen! (Turnoff Tesla’s Tap) have been protesting against environmental poisoning and water shortages since the car manufacturer’s launch. Now Musk wants to expand the plant by 170 hectares.
A week before the sabotage, environmentalists joined forces to protest against the expansion by occupying a woodland where they set up a camp in the region, the police have approved the protests until Friday. Most of Gruenheide’s residents also oppose the expansion, for which Tesla wants to clear 100 hectares of forest.
Sabotage Weakens Industries
The Volcano group is now accused of anti-constitutional sabotage and will be prosecuted severely. But it was worth it, because our society needs these wake-up calls of property damage that temporarily paralyze the infrastructure of corporations.
The batteries for electric cars require rare earths and lithium, which are produced under the most catastrophic environmental and working conditions, so we cannot look the other way and leave it as it is without reacting.
It takes sabotage to leave a statement that makes international news. Common people see the industries and their power as untouchable, as natural, when in fact they’re only manmade so men (and women) can undo the damage that has been done to our only and sacred planet.
With the attack of the Volcano Group we see that powerful corporations are not as powerful as they seem. That small acts can have big impacts.
We stand up for this sabotage action, because the exploitation of nature and people has reached a level that we have to fight from all kinds of levels.
Volcano Group Switch-off Tesla! : Attack on power supply
The confession letter from March 5:
We sabotaged Tesla today. Because Tesla in Grünau eats up earth, resources, people, manpower and spits out 6000 SUVś, killer machines and monster trucks per week. Our gift for March 8 is to shut down Tesla.
Because the complete destruction of the Gigafactory and with it the cutting off of “techno-fascists” like Elon Musk is a step on the path to liberation from the patriarchy.
The Gigafactory has become known for its extreme conditions of exploitation. The factory contaminates the groundwater and consumes huge amounts of the already scarce drinking water resource for its products. The state of Brandenburg-Berlin is being dug up for Tesla without any scruples.
Critics at the waterworks, local residents and eco-activists are being silenced. Figures are embellished. Laws are being bent. People are deceived. Yet a large part of the population around Grünheide rejects the Gigafactory because of water theft and gentrification. The protest and resistance continues unabated. And it is growing, because there is more than one reason. In addition to the dirty battery factory, Tesla now wants to expand its factory site by a further 100 hectares, including for a freight yard. An expansion of the storage and logistics areas directly at the plant (including the possibility of intensive rail logistics) is intended to help stabilize supply chains and production. This is currently impaired because deliveries from the forced labor camps in China cannot take the direct route through the Red Sea. The Brandenburg Ministry of Economic Affairs is eating out of Tesla’s hand, despite many reasons for refusing any approval. The only important thing is that Brandenburg is flourishing as a business location.
Tesla is a symbol of “green capitalism” and a totalitarian technological attack on society.
The myth of green growth is just a dirty ideological magic trick to close the ranks against domestic criticism. It suggests a way out of the climate catastrophe. But “green capitalism” stands for colonialism, land theft and an exacerbation of the climate crisis! Lithium batteries come from toxic mines in Chile and devour other rare metals, which means misery and destruction for the people in the mining areas. The battery factory in Grünheide near Berlin, for example, requires the rare raw material lithium, which is also mined in Bolivia. Musk puts his cards on the table to push through lithium mining in Bolivia: “We will coup if we want to”, commenting on the indigenous resistance to mining. Mineral resources are being ripped from the earth under brutal conditions. The “green deal” is merely the expansion of economic growth without limits. In Portugal, too, the rural population is resisting the forced extraction of lithium.
Just as the earth is used and raped on a daily basis, Tesla does the same with people. And has forced laborers all over the world, such as Uyghur people in China, working (to death) for it (just like VW), whom the racist Chinese regime serves up to the company for its production. Even in Grünheide, the working conditions are considered catastrophic. Only recently, a works council member of IG Metall in Grünheide was dismissed. Despite a yellow works council installed by Tesla, the conditions in the factory are leaking out. In order to improve accident statistics, people are taken to hospital by cab instead of by emergency call and ambulance. Internal opponents are dismissed and if they take legal action, they are forced into a legal settlement. The compensation is then used as a muzzle, for example to stifle public discussion of a racist dismissal by threatening contractual penalties. The terminated employee has to shut up for the money – that is the calculation.
The totalitarian technological attack then looks like this.
A Tesla vehicle is a surveillance device for public spaces
It is equipped all around with high-resolution cameras from Samsung. Samsung is a company that is a leader in weapons technology, among other things.
According to the manufacturer, the cameras record up to 250 meters away. In “guard mode”, they film everything in the vicinity of the vehicle and guarantee that the driver is also monitored while driving. The driver is already a free integral part of the Telsa universe and a guinea pig. Artificial intelligence will register every movement and every mistake made by the driver and monetize it in order to train the software for autonomous driving with the data. Tesla is militarizing the road. Its moving tanks are weapons of war. The car as a weapon. The road is the battlefield.
Instead of 9mm, Tesla has now introduced 856 hp to the world: “If you get into a fight with other cars, you will win,” says Elend Musk.*
*Elend means misery in German, a word play for Elon (comment by the editor)
A Tesla is a status symbol, statement and propaganda at the same time: for contempt for humanity, boundless destruction through “progress” and an imperial, patriarchal way of life.
Anyone who buys an SUV is most likely a supporter of an imperial way of life who wants to profit from this madness to the bitter end. Every activist’s secret poetry album should include a scrapped Tesla. No Tesla in the world should be safe from our flaming rage. Every Tesla that burns sabotages the imperial way of life and effectively destroys the ever-tightening network of seamless smart surveillance of every expression of human life.
Armies use Tesla’s Starlink satellite system in their wars
For example in Ukraine. Russia’s army also accesses Starlink satellite terminals from third countries to carry out attacks. Israel also uses the Starlink satellite system to murder people in Gaza. Tesla’s Starlink infrastructure is a military player. Rolled up like a string of pearls of garbage, they plow through the sky to make surveillance total.
Let’s talk about a man who will crumble to dust, even if he would rather be immortal: Elon Musk.
For men like him, the swear word has not yet been invented that could aptly describe them in their arrogance, contempt for humanity and anti-social greed for power and recognition.
He makes no secret of his chauvinism. His propaganda platform X is the means to an end. This is where he gathers supporters of an imperial way of life. This is where anti-Semites, anti-feminists, authoritarians, chauvinists, fascists and supporters of hatred against “foreigners” reassure themselves. This is where they organize themselves with their elitist view of the world and as master race. This is where the Aryans of the AfD meet their peers.
When Elon Musk cheers the anti-feminist and neoliberal president of Argentina on X, it is because they are united. There is no shyness in this regard, they have decided to stand on the side of a deadly masculinism and drag a trail of blood behind them like a man-eating monster.
Elon Musk is the new type of neoliberal and patriarchal, neocolonial predatory capitalist of this century, who uses different means than the exploiters before him in the last century.
It is an invasive zeitgeist that uses the self-fabricated economic crises of valorization in order to tackle the next destruction. It is only following in the prepared brown footsteps of other patriarchal pioneers. Even the “carmaker” Henry Ford was an admirer of the Nazis with their “Volkswagen” and their efficient organization of industry. The plant in Wolfsburg was run on the backs of forced laborers. Every German was to be able to get a Volkswagen in order to reach their destination by car or tank on the new autobahn. Ford, inspired by the efficiency of German labour organization, transferred the ideas to his empire in the USA. The attack on workers and the economization of exploitation became known as “Fordism”.
This included work organization and assembly line work – mass production with simultaneous mass consumption of the car. The model, also known as Taylorism, was also a class struggle from above. Elon Musk combines the invasive technological possibilities of our time with his mysogynistic world view, patriarchal extremism and the totalitarian attitude typical of his caste. As a “car manufacturer”, he is a revenant in historical tradition. In keeping with the times, he acts as a “techno-fascist”.
Instead of scrapping the car on the garbage heap of history and expanding free public transport, only the drive technology is being changed, from combustion engines to electric motors, in order to save individual transport. The imperial way of life is economically more lucrative.
The positions of power allow patriarchal “visionaries” such as Elon Musk to experiment with the most “advanced” forms of exploitation and with the available resource of “human beings” in the most terrible sense.
Conquering new territories and penetrating the earth without being asked
Into space, into the sky, into public space, into our heads – the rapist leaves nothing untouched. The neurotechnology company Neuralink aims to link human brains with machines. It is using animals to test how streams of thought can be read. Just like SpaceX and Tesla, Neuralink is also aiming for a long-term perspective in which people are worth different things. In which some people are entitled to a better life within the ecological catastrophe that is already underway.
Even if you are not on X, formerly Twitter, if you are just walking through the public streets, you will still be touched by this wretched man and his cameras and propaganda. The positions of power allow a permanent encroachment, an invasive relationship towards all life that can only be stopped by resolute resistance. The “technological progress” of the epochs offers them, the “techno-fascists”, a tool of possibilities with which the exploitation and indescribable destruction of the planet is always topped off.
In its abundance of power, this type can sometimes act like a head of state without having been elected
They have the necessary means of production and the “human” resource to make political decisions. This type can buy heads of state or bring parties to power, even if they are called Hitler. This type is the mastermind behind the alleged decision-makers of governments. They can impose conditions on states or reduce heads of state to supplicants. The patriarchal system churns out tons of people like this, they strive for the top because that corresponds to the patriarchal model. They stage coups when things don’t go their way. They are replaceable. Only their power gives them these opportunities – without power they are just pompous, ridiculous egomaniacs. They have been driving millions of people to their deaths for centuries, destroying nature as if it belonged to them. If we don’t destroy the system that produces such egomaniacs, new ones of their kind will emerge. So it is not (only) about misery Musk – but about an imperial way of life – that these men are imposing on us. It’s about a showdown between an imperial way of life versus freedom for all people.
This type of person and their economic concept represent a minority on this planet who believe that this imperial way of life is the only right one. What is new is that the tipping points that show us the finite nature of this destructive way of life have been passed in many cases. Other tipping points are approaching at breathtaking speed. Year by year, month by month, day by day.
(If all else failed, Elon Musk and a handful of slaves and his ilk would flee the consequences of his imperial way of life and insult Mars with his presence. But our strong extra-planetary allies are already waiting for him; solar storms would crash his rocket, as they have done to 30% of his satellites in space before. So we will win.)
Many people still consider this way of life and the supposed wealth associated with it to be natural and desirable
Many people, clouded and misguided, confuse possessions and material wealth with freedom and happiness. Ignorance, manipulation and fear characterize generations of many people. We are reduced to work and consumption and degraded to an imperial way of life. This material wealth at the expense of other people is an indictment of “civilization”. This way of life does not make its beneficiaries happy either. The alternatives are made invisible or destroyed in the making. Approaches that could benefit humanity without generating money or power are delegitimized. Indigenous ways of life that relate to nature and its protection have been and are being wiped out. Emancipatory approaches that go to the roots have been drowned in blood in all eras. Or revolutionary movements are corrupted, infiltrated, their “leaders” bought in order to secure domination and the progress of destruction for decades to come.
On the eve of March 8th, we therefore lit a beacon against capital, patriarchy, colonialism and Tesla
We counter the ongoing rape of the earth with sabotage. The ideology of limitless economic growth and a belief in progress based on destruction have reached their end. In order for Europe to become a “first-class investment location with a strong industrial ecosystem”, giants like Tesla are still being rolled out of the way. But something is slipping. We, a broad and colorful resistance, are rolling them back down. We are the heaps of rubble and grains of sand in the gears of a machine that is stamping inexorably forward. We are disruptive factors in the engine room. We are the desperate and the outcasts. We are middle-class people in Germany or migrants on the run. We can be many people in the forest and in the tree houses and on the street, we can be covert sabotage groups like ours. It can also be people in the gigafactory who take revenge on their foreman’s machines for his working conditions. We can be caught, beaten, humiliated, raped or murdered – but we are in the right. Only violence can keep us down. But we will get up again. And others will come after us.
With our sabotage, we have set ourselves the goal of the largest possible blackout of the Gigafactory. We have ruled out endangering our lives and the lives of others. The shutdown of production in the automotive industry is the beginning of the end of a world of destruction. Our bonfire of liberation was aimed at supplying Tesla with electricity. We wanted to hit the overhead line of a high-voltage pylon in the connection to the underground cables at the watertight cable sleeves and short-circuit the six 110 kV cables inside. To do this, we opened the shaft to the cable joints, half of which was under water. We still flamed the exposed power cables and, in combination with the water, may have caused a short circuit. Damage to cable joints is often time-consuming and expensive to repair. At the same time, we set the fire large and high with lots of car tires to weaken the steel structure and cause the mast to become unstable.
A steel mast only melts at around 1300 -1500 degrees. As we were working with a heat development of around 900 degrees, the aim was to change the mechanical properties of the mast. As a steel structure under load, a rapid, large fire from 500 degrees upwards can lead to a loss of strength and change the stiffness, yield strength and elasticity of the metal. This can lead to buckling effects, twisting or deflection. That was our intention.
We feel connected to all the people who are fighting around the world and who are reaching out with our words
We feel connected to all the people who will not let Tesla turn off the tap. If we want to win against such giants as Tesla, we need many forms of resistance. Ours is one of many. Unpredictable and diverse, only together can we force the Brandenburg Ministry of Economic Affairs to respect the will of the people. Minister of Economic Affairs Jörg Steinbach (SPD) sees the result of the vote by the residents of Grünheide (71% against the expansion of the Tesla factory site) as just one important vote. Above all, he sees the vote as a “healing opportunity”, which means that Tesla has not succeeded in convincing people and the company still has to do its homework in order to divide, buy, cajole and persuade the population. He does not accept the public’s “no” and calls on Tesla to soften the “no” by May.
Everyone is free to be openly or secretly happy about our action. Anyone who feels compelled to distance themselves should ask themselves why? And who has an interest in this?
Together we will bring Tesla to its knees. Switch off for Tesla.
Share the declaration. Translate it and send it to other people in the global struggle.
Volcano Group switch-off Tesla!
The addendum from March 11:
Follow-up to the arson attack on Tesla
Open letter to the citizens’ initiative in Grünheide and the alliance “Tesla den Hahn Abdrehen” (Turnoff Tesla’s Tap). To the various organizations and action groups. To the squatters. To the private households affected by the power outage.
We, the “Shutdown Tesla Volcano Group!”, speak only for ourselves. We do not speak for other Volcano Groups. Nevertheless, we have been inspired by the content of the actions of other Volcano Groups and have adopted formulations and content that have convinced us. By and large, we share the actions that have been carried out by Volcano Groups since 2011. So much for the many speculations about our group “Shutdown the Tesla Volcano Group!”.
We do not speak for the citizens’ initiative in Grünheide, nor for the “Tesla den Hahn Abdrehen” alliance, nor for other organizations and action groups that criticize Tesla, protest and develop resistance for various reasons. What we have in common is the intention to put up barriers to Tesla and prevent the planned battery factory and other corporate logistics, even if our approach goes far beyond that. This is not a problem for us. We see no reason to distance ourselves from public groups and respect your work.
We recognize the great pressure that some local groups were unable to escape after our attack with its far-reaching consequences
We read many statements as uncertainty rather than distancing. We also understand the concern about the status of the occupied site in the forest or the worry about acceptance among the population. Why allow yourself to be put under pressure and not react calmly to blatant calls to distance yourself? There is no reason to distance yourself from our action, for which you are not responsible. Distancing yourself from each other is not very helpful. Everyone is free to be openly or secretly happy about our action and the shutdown at Tesla. Anyone who feels compelled to distance themselves should ask themselves why? And who has an interest in this?
Nor do we believe that we have harmed the “cause”. For one thing, the “cause” is seen differently. For another, we are proposing a different perspective:
We have been able to implement “Stop Tesla” in the short term. The total failure of a seemingly unassailable giant should bring tears of joy to all our eyes and give us courage beyond the pressure that weighs on us. The nimbus of the unassailable has been broken by this action. And as important as the regional level is, the international context is just as important. The resistance against Tesla has been put in an international light by the action and has also brought attention, encouragement and support to the local resistance.
We have the greatest pressure. The head of Brandenburg’s CDU has expressed the strategy of the investigating authorities at the highest level. The aim is to catch the perpetrators and punish them severely in order to deter others from coming up with similar ideas. The accusation of “anti-constitutional sabotage” is countered by the “right to resist”. The idea is in the world, even if we could be caught.
We are biased. We are handing over further political evaluation and classification to other militant groups
The scale and impact of the action is already huge. Even before our letter on the arson became known, Tesla shares fell by 3%. The market does not forgive vulnerability and weakness. After all, an international “global player” of the “technological attack” on society was severely hit and demonstrated. This signal was not only immediately understood by the country’s economically liberal politicians, but was also evaluated at the highest levels of business representatives and politics. Within hours of the letter becoming known, the various institutions attempted to avert the damage to Brandenburg’s and Germany’s image as an investment paradise and took countermeasures. Jörg Steinbach from the Brandenburg Ministry of Economic Affairs immediately phoned Elon Musk. They assured each other of their common interests for the future.
We recommend that the citizens, the local groups and the tree houses allow themselves to be less impressed by our action
And less influenced by the pressure to distance themselves, and instead study the reactions of politics, the state and ultimately the economy more closely.
Because here it becomes clear how determinedly the opponents are trying to push through the further Tesla settlement. It is clear how resolutely the social model of “destructive progress” is being adhered to. We will not go into the content of the latter here. Some older texts by other Volcano Groups and many other militant groups have said something about this.
We don’t just want to prevent something. Together, we are all in a position to initiate a change of direction. Tesla can become one of the crystallization points of this confrontation with the global social model of “destructive progress”. So it goes far beyond the regional.
In these dark times, our action is a small beacon that, with the old tires and our measurements on site, came to around 1000 degrees. Sabotage groups like ours are an important part of the resistance, even if the priorities of other important groups are different. No small militant group alone, no regional group and no non-violent action group that has traveled here can defeat this major opponent. Stopping Tesla can only be done together.
We are not distancing ourselves.
For us, non-violent and militant are not contradictory
In order to divide the movement against Tesla, politicians and the investigating authorities have resorted to the familiar rhetorical tricks. “Left-wing extremists”, “Green RAF”, “terrorism”, “stupidest eco-terrorists in the world”, “children of the RAF”, “blind destructive rage”, “close to terrorism”, “internationally operating criminal gang”, “terrorist organization” are all attempts at stigmatization. Rather, it is also about a desolidarization within the population! This rhetoric misses the core of the problem. We are not terrorists and will not become terrorists. We don’t work for Rheinmetall. We are not called Elon Musk. We don’t let people mine lithium under horrific conditions. We are not destroying the earth. We don’t trade grain on the stock exchange. We don’t want to kill other people or accept their deaths to maximize profits.
We even save the snails on the electricity pylon before we light it on fire minutes later.
We have ruled out any risk to human life. The operation would never have been carried out if we had had the slightest doubt about it. We bore the greatest risk. Here, too, we could not afford to make a mistake.
In contrast to Tesla, hospitals and old people’s homes with medical equipment, for example, are equipped with a redundant system. As our action was clear in its objective and consequences, the other side must try everything possible to publicly discredit the successful arson. They gratefully seized on the “stupidest eco-terrorists in the world” slogan from the “techno-fascist” Elon Musk. Within a few hours, Brandenburg’s politicians tried to get a grip on the power of interpretation over the attack. The reception of the action in the media was often revealing.
All of us in the protest and resistance can learn a lot from the action. And crucially, none of the substantive arguments put forward publicly have been able to refute our position so far.
We can only laugh about the raging misery Musk
Of course, he has to insult us as the “dumbest eco-terrorists” because he defends his business model, to which we have put a visible scratch on his body. Since, according to the latest reports, he will be a potential donor for the presidential election campaign of the putschist Trump, we are happy to have burned some of “his” money. This money is lacking elsewhere. Because misery Musk doesn’t have insurance. We are pleasantly surprised by the amount of damage caused by the blackout, but honestly; 10 million, several 100 million or one billion euros are beyond our imagination. The longer the Gigafactory is sealed, the better for Earth. Switch-OFF! Tesla.
There is only one thing for which we would like to apologize. We didn’t see any way to carry out the action without about 5,000 households and small businesses being without electricity for five hours. According to the media, all private households had electricity again at 10:22 a.m. If we had seen another option, we would have acted differently. Before the action, we were not able to check whether only Tesla was hanging from the high-voltage pylon that had been specially converted for it or whether private households were also hanging on it. It was about Tesla, not about our homes where we live. We apologize to all those affected.
Greeting and kiss
Your “dumbest eco-terrorists in the world” in the Volcano Group Switch-off Tesla!
